Arnold Zweig

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Zweig, Arnold (Groß-Glogau, Silesia, 1887-1968, Berlin), the son of a Jewish master saddler, studied from 1907 to 1911 at various universities and served in the 1914-18 War, latterly in a press unit on the Russian front. After the war he turned to authorship, and from 1923 lived in Berlin. In 1933 he fled to Czechoslovakia, moving from there to Palestine, where he worked as a journalist. From 1948 until his death he lived in East Berlin. During these last years he suffered from blindness, and his later works were dictated. Zweig was a recipient of various prizes for literature, and from 1950 to 1953 was president of the East German Academy of Arts. He was not related to Stefan Zweig.

Zweig wrote two early tragedies, Abigail und Nabal (1913) and Ritualmord in Ungarn (1914), and the plays Bonaparte in Jaffa (1939) and Soldatenspiele (1956, a collection), but he is mainly the author of fiction. His collections of stories include Die Novellen um Claudia (1912), Aufzeichnungen über eine Familie Klopfer (1911), Geschichtenbuch (1916), Söhne. Zweites Geschichtenbuch, Gerufene Schatten (both 1923), Frühe Fährten, Regenbogen (both 1925), Knaben und Männer, Mädchen und Frauen (both 1931), Spielzeug der Zeit (1933), and Allerlei Rauch (1949); his Novellen Der Spiegel des großen Kaisers (1926, ext. 1957) and Pont und Anna (1928, originally included in Regenbogen) were published separately.

In 1927 appeared Zweig's best novel, Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa (dramatized as Das Spiel vom Sergeanten Grischa, 1949, new stage version 1957), which was followed by Junge Frau von 1914 (1931) and De Vriendt kehrt heim (1932). His next two novels, Erziehung vor Verdun (1935) and Einsetzung eines Königs (1937), were prefixed to Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa to form a trilogy; at their respective centres are Bertin and Winfried, two characters from the earlier novel. In his 60s Zweig arranged his war novels to make a cycle of six works entitled Der große Krieg der weißen Männer. It consists of Die Zeit ist reif (1958), the earlier novels Erziehung vor Verdun, Junge Frau von 1914, Einsetzung eines Königs, and Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa, and Feuerpause (1954). Other novels are Versunkene Tage (1938, retitled Verklungene Tage, 1950), Das Beil von Wandsbek (1947, rev. 1953, first in Hebrew 1943), and Traum ist teuer (1962).

Front-line experience at Verdun was crucial for Zweig's anti-war attitude; the remark, written in 1940 from Haifa to his Dutch publisher, that for him the war has never really ended (‘der für mich eigentlich nie aufgehört hat’) characterizes his lifelong commitment (reflected in the development of Bentin, the German and Jewish intellectual) to his analysis of the period, its Prussian military and its cultural and social climate, beginning with pre-war Germany. Zweig's traditional narrative technique combined with the influence of his friend S. Freud, with whom he corresponded from 1927; their Briefwechsel, ed. E. L. Freud, appeared in 1968.

Zweig's essays, many of which are devoted to the Jewish problem, include Lessing, Kleist, Büchner (1925), Bilanz der deutschen Judenheit (1934), and Die Aufgabe des Judentums (1933, ed. with postscr. K. Pätzsold, 1990), written in collaboration with L. Feuchtwanger; their correspondence, Briefwechsel 1933-1958, appeared in 1984. A select edition of his works, Ausgewählte Werke (16 unnumbered vols.), appeared 1957-67 DDR; 1972-87 BRD.

1887-1968

Born to a Jewish family in Glogau, Silesia, on November 10, 1887, novelist and author Arnold Zweig died in East Berlin, almost completely blind, on November 26, 1968. At his death Zweig was the most celebrated author in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

Zweig was unrelated to the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, but both men were important to Sigmund Freud, albeit in different ways. According to Ernest Jones: "Freud's attitude toward the two men was indicated by his mode of address. Stefan was Lieber Herr Doktor, Arnold was Lieber Meister Arnold" (1957, p. 133).

Between 1927 and 1939 Zweig and Sigmund Freud conducted an exceptionally important correspondence. When it was published in 1968, Freud's son Ernst and Arnold's son Adam decided to withhold twenty-five letters as being too personal or of insufficient scientific value, creating an impression that they wished to conceal something in their fathers' private lives.

Originally a saddler by trade, Adolf Zweig became a supplier to the Prussian army before anti-Semitic regulations forced him to return to his former profession, an incident that seems to have had a powerful impact on his son. Zweig was a brilliant student who matriculated at various European universities before being conscripted during World War I, a painful experience that undoubtedly played a role in his later antimilitarism.

Zweig began publishing fiction in 1911, and was a profound admirer both of Thomas Mann and of the nineteenth-century realists. Publication of The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1927) made him known to a wide audience and brought him to the attention of Freud.

After the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Zweig emigrated to Palestine in 1933 and lived for some years in Haifa. He traveled widely, and a trip to New York in 1939 enabled him to meet other well-known Germanémigrés. Zweig had long been interested in Zionism and socialism, but by the time Israel became a state he was both disillusioned and impoverished. He returned to East Germany in 1948, and was soon elected a parliament deputy in the new socialist republic. Zweig also succeeded Heinrich Mann as president of the German Academy of Arts. Henceforth, Zweig was a government-sponsored author and member of the Communist Party. For his efforts to legitimize East German literature, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.

Zweig's literary workfeatures a severe critique of militarism and lively political and social convictions. These traits are also characteristic of his correspondence with Freud; their subjects range from incest and homosexuality to a wide variety of reflections on political, historical, and poetical issues.

In one of the most famous letters in their correspondence (May 11, 1934), Freud's comments about Zweig's plan for a book on Friedrich Nietzsche served as an opening for his own ideas on the problems of psychological and psychopathological biography. He wrote: "I cannot say whether these are my true reasons against your plan. Perhaps they have something to do with the way in which you compare me to him. In my youth [Nietzsche] signified a nobility to which I could not attain" (Jones, 1957, p. 460). This passage probably reflects the character of transference love that more or less pervades the Freud-Zweig relationship. Zweig also alludes briefly in the correspondence to the difficulties he encountered in his own analysis in Berlin, by which he hoped to treat severe depression and anxiety.

The year Freud began writing Moses and Monotheism, he reported on the work and its difficulties in a letter to Zweig (September 30, 1934). In discussing the project with Max Eitington, Zweig remarked that he had advised Freud to publish his book in Palestine. Judaism was an important topic for both men and the subject of many of their letters. In one letter (May, 31 1936) Zweig reports on an archaeological discovery that might confirm Freud's theory about the origins of the man Moses. In 1937, Freud, who thought that his "hereditary claim to life would run out in November," (Jones, 1957, p. 213) asked Zweig, who was considering a visit to Europe, not to postpone it any longer.

In 1938, Zweig made a final attempt to intervene on Freud's behalf in favor of his being awarded the Nobel Prize. Freud held out little hope for this, considering opposition to psychoanalysis and his reputation in the eyes of the Nazis. He wrote Zweig on June 28, 1938: "[I]t can hardly be expected that the official circles could bring themselves to make such a provocative challenge to Nazi Germany as bestowing the honor on me would be." (Jones, 1957, p. 234)

Arnold Zweig was one of many celebrated literary figures whose friendship Freud cultivated. Their common interests in Judaism, pacifism, and such historical figures as Napoleon, Nietzsche, and Moses brought them particularly close.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1968a [1927-39]). The letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig (Ernst L. Freud, Ed.; Professor and Mrs. W. D. Robson-Scott, Trans.). London: Hogarth Press, 1970.

Jones, Ernest. (1957). Life and work of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 3). New York: Basic Books.

Further Reading

Mijolla, Alain de. (1993). Freud, biography, his autobiography, and his biographers. Psychoanalysis and History, 1 (1), 4-27.

—BERNARD GOLSE

Stamp with face and three important novels

Arnold Zweig (10 November 1887 – 26 November 1968) was a German writer and anti-war activist. He is best known for his World War I tetralogy.

Contents 1 Life and work 2 References 3 Bibliography 4 References

Life and work

Zweig was born in Glogau, Silesia (today Glogow, Poland) son of a Jewish saddler. After attending a gymnasium in Kattowitz (Katowice), he made extensive studies in history, philosophy and literature at several universities - Breslau (Wrocław), Munich, Berlin, Göttingen, Rostock and Tübingen. He was especially influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. His first literary works Novellen um Claudia (1913) and Ritualmord in Ungarn gained him wider recognition.

Zweig volunteered for the German army in World War I and saw action as a private in France, Hungary and Serbia. He was stationed in the Western Front at the time when Judenzählung (the Jewish census) was administered in the German army. Shaken by the experience, he wrote in his letter dated February 15, 1917 to Martin Buber: "The Judenzählung was a reflection of unheard sadness for Germany's sin and our agony... If there was no antisemitism in the army, the unbearable call to duty would be almost easy." He began to revise his views on the war and to realize that it pitted Jews against Jews.^[1] Later he described his experiences in the short story Judenzählung vor Verdun. The war changed Zweig from a Prussian patriot to an eager pacifist.

By the end of the war he was assigned to the Press department of the German Army Headquarters in Kaunas and there he was first introduced to the East European Jewish organisations.

In a quite literal effort to put a face to the hated 'Ostjude' (Eastern European Jew), due to their Orthodox, economically depressed, "unenlightened," "un-German" ways, Zweig published with the artist Hermann Struck Das ostjüdische Antlitz (The Face of East European Jewry) in 1920. This was a blatant effort to at least gain sympathy among German Jews for the plight of their eastern European brethren. With the help of many simple sketches of faces, Zweig supplied interpretations and meaning behind them.

After World War I he was an active socialistic Zionist in Germany. After Hitler's attempted coup in 1923 Zweig went to Berlin and worked there as the editor-in-chief of a newspaper Jüdische Rundschau.

In the 1920s, Zweig became attracted to the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud and underwent Freudian therapy himself. In March 1927 Zweig wrote to Freud asking permission to dedicate his new book to Freud. In the letter Zweig told Freud: "I personally owe to your psychological therapy the restoration of my whole personality, the discovery that I was suffering from a neurosis and finally the curing of this neurosis by your method of treatment."

Freud returned this ardent letter with a warm letter of his own, and the Freud-Zweig correspondence continued for a dozen years - momentous years in Germany's history. This correspondence is extensive and interesting enough to have been published in book form.

In 1927 Zweig published the anti-war novel The Case of Sergeant Grischa, which made him an international literary figure. From 1929 he was a contributing journalist of anti-Nazi newspaper Die Weltbühne (World Stage).

When the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, Zweig was one of many Jews who immediately went into voluntary exile. Zweig went first to Czechoslovakia, then Switzerland and France. After spending some time with Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Anna Seghers and Bertolt Brecht in France he set out for Palestine.

In Haifa, Palestine, he published a German newspaper Orient. During the years spent in Palestine he became disillusioned with Zionism and turned to socialism.

His 1947 book The Axe of Wandsbek concerned the 'Altona Bloody Sunday' ('Altonaer Blutsonntag') riot, an SA march on 17 July 1932 that turned violent and led to 18 people being shot dead ^[2], with four Communists including Bruno Tesch subsequently being beheaded for their alleged involvement ^[3].

In 1948, after a formal invitation from the East German government, Zweig decided to return to the Soviet Zone (later called the GDR). In East Germany he was in many ways involved in the communist system. He was a member of parliament, delegate to the World Peace Council Congresses and the cultural advisory board of the communist party. He was President of the German Academy of the Arts from 1950-53.

He was rewarded with many prizes and medals by the regime. The USSR awarded him the Lenin Peace Prize (1958) for his anti-war novels.

After 1962, due to poor health, Zweig virtually withdrew from the political and artistic fields. Arnold Zweig died in East Berlin on 26 November 1968.

References

1. ^ Noah William Isenberg: Between Redemption and Doom. The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism p.59-60 [1]
2. ^ asfpg ~ Altonaer Stiftung für philosophische Grundlagenforschung
3. ^ Das Beil Von Wandsbek - Trailer - Cast - Showtimes - The New York Times

Bibliography

Major works:

• Claudia (1913)
• Young Woman of 1914
• Playthings of Time
• The Time is Ripe
• De Vriendt Goes Home
• The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1927)
• Education before Verdun (1935)
• Crowning of a King
• The Axe of Wandsbek (1947)

References

1. ^ Noah William Isenberg: Between Redemption and Doom. The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism p.59-60 [1]
2. ^ asfpg ~ Altonaer Stiftung für philosophische Grundlagenforschung
3. ^ Das Beil Von Wandsbek - Trailer - Cast - Showtimes - The New York Times

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